


Singin' this'll be the day that I die

by submersive



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Always Female Billy Hargrove, F/M, Female Billy Hargrove, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-06-26 09:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19765741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/submersive/pseuds/submersive
Summary: Billie Hargrove and Steve Harrington and how they came to be.Or - the one where Billy Hargrove is Billie Hargrove and it doesn't change anything except it does. Maybe.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is really different to what I usually write but it's something I couldn't get out of my head when American Pie played on shuffle. I could imagine it. Steve and Billie in the middle of a clearing. She'll be leaning on her car, her hair gently swinging with the chilly autumn breeze, and a cigarette dangling from her lips and Steve will just look up from where he's perched on the side and he'll realise how gone he is for this girl.
> 
> *Warning*: there's something in this chapter that might actually be considered suicide ideation but it's really just a character wanting so badly for everything to stop.

_She's a wild young thing_ , they would say. With her smooth blonde hair, cherry red lips, and feral blue eyes, Billie Hargrove spelled trouble the moment she revved up the quiet sleepy town of Hawkins. At least that’s what the adults would say.

It wouldn’t have been a great thing - her capacity for violence. The strength of her muscles unladylike, the way her presence fill the room like she’s too big and too untamed for this shit hole. Except now she’s standing and straining with her arms pushing at this _thing_ in front of her and a kid behind her and she feels like maybe she was built for this moment.

Her mother’s death and her father’s fists and the rage and fear that reside in her bones - she feels set free. _Oh god oh god oh god she’s going to die soon_ , her mind whispers, frantic and afraid. Then calm. _Good_.

With fireworks going off on her periphery and the familiar taste of blood in her mouth, for once in her life, Billie Hargrove finally feels like she’s doing something good.

-

The world was blessedly silent for a while. Like she’s high, like she’s _dead_.

Because that’s what Billie thinks she is. She’s dead and it’s funny. Almost hilarious, because she always thought death would mean she’ll have no thoughts. Nothing to mull over. But she’s conscious and _aware_ except for the way her body seems to belong to someone else.

She looks down just to make sure she even actually has a body.

There’s a tank top which could have been white at some point, but is definitely not white _now_. There’s soot and something that she definitely knows is dried blood and she thinks maybe it’s from her nose but there’s just too much of it and no matter how hard Neil beat her up this time, it couldn’t have all been from her nose.

“Hello,” a voice said, echoing from wherever it came from in this black and empty expanse of nothingness.

Billie twists around and her feet make ripples underneath her soles but she’s too busy looking at this little girl to notice anything. She’s familiar - Billie has seen her before. Somewhere.

And _oh_.

Oh yeah.

“Am I dead?” Billie asks, not really knowing how to feel about the answer either way now that what she thinks is death constitutes to being aware of her surroundings. She feels cheated somehow.

The girl she died in front of tilts her head to the side like she’s trying to figure Billie out.

“No,” she answers. “Alive.”

“Okay,” Billie replies, “then where am I?”

“Am—” the girl pauses as she seems to look for the right way to form the word on her mouth. “Ambulance”.

For a moment there's nothing but silence, the next second, then the black empty expanse flickers around them and the ground shakes. 

There’s noise that breaks through this strange place. And it's loud. It's too much. The loud siren, the scratch of something against her back, likely the cloth on the gurney. And pain. So much of it. From her chest, her stomach, her arms. She's screaming - the kind of scream that doesn't even have a sound. The kind of scream that doesn't even make it up your mouth because your body isn't working like it should and she hears someone begging _pleasepleaseplease_ and _it hurts_ and _nononono_ garbling into themselves, mixing up the vowels and consonants until they don't make any sense.

Her body folds into itself as she falls to the ripply ground of this black empty space, her blood gushing up her mouth until she's drowning in it and _good_ she thinks hysterically. _Good, maybe she'll die now. Properly._

"Billie," the girl breathes out, her voice coming from somewhere much closer than it had been before but Billie can't open her eyes. Can't unglue them from where they're squeezed shut from the pain. "Wake up."

“Stop,” Billie grits out, spitting out some of the blood gurgling up her throat. Thinks maybe she's the one she heard begging just a second ago. “Stop it.”

“Wake up,” the girl says like she's used to telling people these impossible things, but she’s fading away as well. Flickering along with the pain and noise and _God, she just wants to die, why won't they—_

“No," she spits out. "Please I don’t want to—”

But then the girl is gone and her body is horizontal and the roof of the ambulance is _bright bright bright_.

_No_ , she thinks and then she fades away too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic wouldn't be a magical fix it fic where Billie (Billy) is suddenly _a better person_. It's gonna take her a while but she's gonna get there. Just not right now.

Billie Hargrove has been called many names.

 _Sunshine_ , by her mother. Along with _darling_ , and _sweetheart_ , and _baby_. She was _Willa Jane Hargrove_ when her mother was exasperated with her. Was _kid_ when her mother was tired. She was _baby girl_ when her mother was tending to her typhoid fever after they went camping.

Her first boyfriend, all buck-tooth and chapped lips and not even really someone Billie considered a boyfriend, called her _Willa_ before Billie could shake the name off.

Her first girlfriend called her _Cherry Bomb_. She was 18 and Billie was 15. She broke Billie’s heart, but that was okay.

Some time later, when Billie started introducing herself as _Billie_ she started hearing _bitch_.

She started hearing _useless whore_ from people around her as she goes on a downward spiral after the tide took her mom away.

 _Bully_ was also a new one.

As they move further inland, as her father uproots their lives - as he takes them away from the salty tang of the ocean and the sand between her toes, she hears _psychopath_. Mostly from her stepsister, not that Billie ever gave her an excuse to not call her that.

Then she hears _racist_. And _crazy bitch_.

She hears _ungrateful_. And _arrogant_.

She hears _useless piece of garbage_ as Neil pounds her face in.

Billie takes them all in stride. Revels in them, even. She’s not proud, per se, but it’s better they see those things than accidentally uncovering the pus-filled wound festering within her ribs right where her heart should be.

It’s not that she’s deep or anything. She’s just angry all the time. So she lets her father call her names - lets him dig into the small gashes to distract him from the fact that sometimes the only thing stopping her from exploding from the inside out is the thought that she deserves this for killing her mom.

She takes the punches. The crooked nose. The bruises. The lumps on her head.

They're enough to keep her thoughts silent, so that's a plus.

She’s also a coward, but who really cares?

But for all those things, there's one thing she’s never been called before and that's _mass murderer_.

And yet, somehow, that’s what Billie suddenly was.

—

She doesn’t think she’s in hospital.

It looks like one and smells like one, but it definitely isn’t one.

For one thing, she sees more people wearing suits than wearing scrubs. For another, hospitals don’t get your thumbprint for piles of non-disclosure agreements when you're high as shit.

Hospitals don’t have papers that basically says 'No, I will not tell anyone about that one time I was possessed' and 'No, I will not tell people I killed their family as a sacrifice to whatever the hell that demon was'.

Most notably, hospitals probably don't have giant heating rooms that they throw their patients in until their skin is almost boiling so as to purge them or exorcise them.

Whatever the hell this place was, Billie can’t wait to get the fuck out of it.

Three weeks after Billie was able to form a coherent thought and was actually able to grunt out a proper response from around the tube shoved down her throat, the people pretending to be nurses and doctors start weaning her off drugs — and they were _good_ drugs—Billie can’t move an inch without biting into her lip to keep herself from screaming in pain.

They also start to drill the cover story to her brain until she can repeat it without needing to pause now and again.

Five days after they took off the catheter, she tries out her legs for the lack of anything better to do and for being so tired of needing constant help to do the most basic and mundane bullshit.

She grits through the vertigo and uses the dextrose stand to help her shuffle herself over to the bathroom.

Now here’s the thing: Billie's strong as hell and not a wuss like her father said she is everytime she cried, but during the weaning off period, Billie cried approximately four times.

Once was when she was questioned _yet again_ on what she remembers - to which she responded by trying (and failing) to punch out the face of the person who asked because she remembers being a mass murderer so _fuck you for asking_.

Once was during one of Max’s visits. Billie knows that Max and some of her weirdo friends hung out in her room at the guise of visiting but they’re probably actually there keeping watch because they trust the guys in the facility as much as Billie does, which is not at all. But for some reason, for that particular night when Billie saw Max and _only_ Max curled up on the uncomfortable chair by her bedside at the dead of night looking so young and so pale, Billie quietly started losing her absolute shit. She knows deep in her bones that Max probably had to sneak out. That her dad didn't want Max to have anything to do with Billie now that she has conveniently fucked off from their lives. Billie doesn't even _know_ if he knew where she was, just that he probably didn't care.

Then, not a day later, she cries about the whole mass murderer possessed thing _again_ because while Billie is made of 80% horrible fuckwit, 10% cowardice, and 10% expert in shoving her bullshit in the farthest corners of her mind, it’s pretty fucking difficult to find a nice little compartment in her brain that would fit _Billie Hargrove: Mass Murderer_.

Then the next day, because she has to sit through another fucking sauna session.

She thinks maybe she’s about to add one more instance on this list now that she's seen her reflection.

The bathroom light is bright and unforgiving but even if it didn’t wash out her fucking skin, she’d still look horrible. She can see some stitches on her arms traveling up to the sleeves of her hospital gown. Can see the still fading bruises littering her body. Still see the blueish grey tinge on her face.

The most pathetic thing is that it almost looks normal because she's been bruised like this before. It’s not like it’s news to find bruises in the topography of her body with Neil constantly making sure she's reminded of how useless she is by way of giving her the black, blue, and purple palette.

What’s different are the charred and blackened veins on her jawline. They’re not as pronounced as they probably were before, but they’re prominent enough to remind her of what she’s done. Enough to know that there's probably more of the whole purging thing in this facility where they shove her into a sauna-like room much like those weirdo kids did, except this time it hurts tenfold because majority of her body is already wounded.

She watches her reflection as she raises a hand up, not even wincing when the movement pulls on some of the stitches. But instead of finding its way to the right side of her face, her skin brushes up against the spiky ends of what's left of her hair. They shaved off them all off at some point for the head wounds, and thing is - it’s already growing back. So it doesn't make any sense why Billie suddenly chokes on her own spit, the back of her eyes burning, trying to hold back tears.

Her face looks so different and she looks so much like Neil that she wants to slam her face to the sink just to get rid of the similarities. Billie's very much aware that they’ll grow back but it doesn't change the fact that the only physical thing that reminds her of her mom, the only physical thing that she has that connects her to her mom in some way has been shaved right off.

So yeah, she’s crying and she’s maybe collapsing on her knees and pulling at her stitches and making these horrible aching sounds and all she really wants is for her mom to come running to her and call her _baby girl_. Maybe she's loud, or hollering, or maybe she's screaming, because suddenly the door to her room slams open and there's a pair of dirty shoes in her field of vision.

“Hargrove!” A voice calls out sounding frantic, followed by the feeling of a gentle hand curling itself around her elbow. “Hargrove. _Hey_. Hey, listen to me. _Hey_.”

There’s another hand on her jaw, gently but firmly turning her face away from where she's staring at her reflection so she's looking at the person instead.

Crouched by her side looking terrified as hell was Steve Harrington. He's close enough that Billie feels his warmth, and Billie distantly feels the hand on her elbow make its way to her back where it begins to move in soothing circles without pressing down on the numerous pain points littering her skin.

“Billie?” Harrington calls out again. Kinder this time but no less terrified. His eyes are so bright and her skin is so pale and the black black veins are so dark.

There are sets of footsteps echoing from outside her door like they're the heralding of incoming nurses, but she doesn’t pry her eyes from Harrington’s face. Can't pry her eyes away because it's the closest thing she has of the outside world. Then, for shits and giggles and maybe very definitely for some semblance of control over the sudden surge of anger within her, she launches her body at him and bowls him over until he overbalances and lands on his back, his head making a loud enough crack on the ground to make it satisfying.

She’s too fucking weak to do any real damage, so they mostly end up uncomfortably twisted on the ground. Half of her body is spilled on the floor, the other half is on Harrington and the cold and warmth of both surfaces are stark enough of a contrast that she subtly shuffles closer until there's less of her on the floor and more of her on Steve.

She tries to raise a fist and even manages to weakly swing at him until it lands on his jaw. She doesn't know _why_ she wants to hurt him. Just that she does.

“Are you kidding me?” Harrington grits out weakly, groaning from the weight digging into his side but easily pushing her pathetically weak fists away. "Jesus, you're fucking _psycho_ ".

 _That's a new one_. She thinks hysterically.

She laughs before using her forehead to dig into Harrington's collarbone. Eager to hurt him any way her body can allow her and finding comfort in the fact that she knows how painful it is to dig bone to bone even with the layer of skin between them. 

_Fucking psycho, alright_.

The footsteps — the herald of nurses — find them on the floor like that. With Harrington not even pushing her off despite the fact that Billie was definitely hurting him. Like she's some fragile shit and he's too much of a gentleman to fight back because she's a girl. No, Harrington doesn't do any of those. Instead, he lets the nurses lift her up from him, even helps them out as she pliantly lets them lead her back to the bed.

 _Fucking psycho mass murderer,_ her brain whispers.

He stays, though. Quietly but very attentively watching the nurses do their work on her. Eyes following every bottle of medicine they’re using and probably registering every face that’s in the room with them, judging by the way he’s tracking them. He stays until the nurses are done, until they’re the only ones left. He doesn’t say anything. Just leans casually on the wall across Billie’s bed, rubbing the part of his collarbone where Billie tried to push her skull into and subtly trying to feel the back of his head from the loud crash from earlier.

“Told you to plant your feet, dipshit,” Billie says, her words slurring. And she's suddenly aware of the wetness traveling from the corner of her eye to the side of her head where her hair should have been and belatedly realises that she's started crying again. Or maybe she's been crying the whole time and that's why King Steve has this look on his face like he can't decide whether he should help her or ignore her.

He does neither of those, though. Billie's a little confused if she's grateful or resentful of him for not doing anything. Instead, he just continues to stand just far enough that he can watch her. He looks like he's thinking of what a crazy psycho she is.

Like he's contemplating if she's worth it.

Like this will be the last time he'll let his name be on the roster of people who'll keep Billie company like she's a chore.

She thinks maybe she's still crying.

 _Mass murderer_. She chuckles wetly at the thought, squeezing her eyes shut at the thought of probably needing another cycle of purging whatever the fuck remained of the demon that lived in her.

They can exorcise her all they want, she's probably still gonna stay as fucked up as she is. Probably should have just let her die.

-

The next time she wakes up, no one's there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and thank you for the comments.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malibu and Hawkins. Billie and Neil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Just to let you know, I've hammered out the chapters of this fic and what happens when. I _promise_ the Steve and Billie part is coming soon, but it'll take them a while to get there. This sort of is becoming a Billie fic because she's so fascinating to write and her headspace is a mess so we have to fix that a wee bit before she can have even a faintly healthy relationship with anyone else.
> 
> Steve's going to help with that soon, but, you know, they don't magically fall in love asap.
> 
> I also have a short one that's unrelated to this story but is _still_ CISfem!Billy/Steve just so I wouldn't end up punching myself in the face with the mess I made haha. That might be posted as well. Who knows.

Malibu, for Billie, was home.

It was bright sun and sand between the webbings of her fingers and toes. It was salt in her hair, and ice cream by the shore and her mother’s tinkling laughter. It was Neil — who was a more or less an absent dad due to work but a dad all the same — lifting her tiny body way up high in the air before gently placing her on his shoulders.

Malibu was warmth and backyard barbecue with Neil’s pals from law enforcement. It was a kiss to her forehead in the middle of the night, the cigarette stained scent of his dad’s breath lingering just before he left for work.

Malibu was not supposed to be a walking minefield of sadness and mourning, but it became that anyway.

Billie remembers it being the fourth of July weekend. It was unusually blisteringly hot but her friends from the block along with their families were setting up at Zuma beach for a barbecue and her dad wouldn’t have to go to work that day so they all made their way down to have fun.

She remembers her and her friends begging their parents to let them go further away from them. She’d always been the leader on their little gaggle of friends so they followed where she led.

“Not too far, Billie,” her dad warned but it was light and full of fondness, Billie didn’t think much of it. He eyes her mom from where she was sitting with Janie who lived two houses down. “Can you go with her, dear?”

It was a normal day. It was supposed to be that. The currents were strong but Billie had to show off, didn’t she? She just had to show off.

The next thing she knows, a riptide swept her away, dragging her further into the ocean. She remembers finding purchase - just a cloth between her fingers but it slipped off and she was drowning.

She remembers her lungs burning and breathing in water and crying out.

The next thing she remembers was being thrown by someone to some neighbour’s arms, her tired little body curled onto their chest where they stood watching as Neil ran into the ocean yelling out her mom’s name.

She remembers being unable to meet her dad’s eyes across the dinner table the night she got out of the hospital. His hands were curled into fists and he was silent in a way he never had been.

Three days later, Neil came home after having to identify a body. The same night, her lip was bleeding from her dad’s fist. That was the first time he hit her and it wouldn’t be the last.

-

Hawkins was fucking cold.

It was _always_ cold except for the brief number of weeks when it turns into hellscape that could fry an egg on the pavement then it’s autumn again. Autumn in Hawkins was beautiful, the foliage was something Billie had never seen before, but it was still frigid as heck. Billie didn't think fall can be this fucking cold but Hawkins is proving her wrong once again.

“Remember,” the nurse says as she wheels Billie out of the facility for the last fucking time, _thank fuck_. “Take your medicine at the right hours and only take the correct dosage”.

“Okay, ma’am,” Billie replies, pushing herself out of the chair once they reach the exit. The cool air blasts at them when they reach the door, Billie's worn t-shirt that Max had dropped off some days ago does nothing to shield her from the frigid autumn wind.

Her hand was still cramping from signing another mountain of documents and she _still_ can't walk more than 20 minutes but she's out. She's finally out and it feels so good to have the sun shining down her body that she doesn't even mind if no one would pick her up and she'd have to walk or hike or something. Hell, she doesn't even know where she'd go, unsure if she's still welcome at Neil and Susan's.

“And call the number if you feel like your insides are melting! Your dad's waiting at the parking lot."

She startles at that, her hands pushing her body up from the wheelchair until she's on her own two feet again. Her eyes land on where Neil was standing impatiently by the gate leaning on his pick up. He looks faintly angry, but it’s real familiar that Billie almost feels happy to see it.

He motions for her to hurry up before yanking the driver's side door open and hiking himself up, not even bothering to help her out. Not that she needs any help, or anything. And not like she expected him to. He probably thinks he's already doing a lot for picking her up.

 _Fuck him, then,_ she thinks bitterly, hiking a backpack up to her shoulder as she tries to jog up to where Neil was without jostling her body too much _and_ without showing how much effort it took for her to hurry up.

The drive back to their house was mostly silent except for the occasional groans of pain that Billie failed to swallow every time Neil takes a sharp turn or deliberately drives through potholes. _Still a fucking asshole then_ , Billie thinks as she subtly presses her palm just below her chest. _The killing blow_ , she thinks. And a shitty one at that.

“Your sister's at the bowling alley. I'm expecting you both to be here by 8PM sharp. Pick her up” he says once she finishes dragging herself to the front door, tossing his keys at her like this is just another fucking day for him. Like Billie’s torso isn’t full of stitches and like she hasn't been gone for three months. “And make us dinner before you leave so we don’t starve, fuck knows if your dumb shithead brain can't follow rules.”

She looks around the living room and the dining room. It's still pristine and unchanged from the last time Billy was there three fucking months ago. Billie knows what it was like to live in a house that lost someone and this doesn't feel anything like it. Figures her "disappearance act" doesn't so much as change anything in the Hargrove household. Shit, Neil was probably overjoyed.

"Max is out?" She asks, swallowing around the bitterness and looking to see if it'll annoy Neil the way it always does when she asks anything from him. She doesn't know why she wants a fight, just that she does.

Neil makes a dismissive and annoyed sound but that's all he does. It sets her teeth on edge because she doesn't know what to do with a Neil who won't bash her face in with any sort of excuse to do so. It makes her feel even more worthless - it makes her feel like she matters less. Like he can't even fucking give a shit enough about her to break her nose.

She looks up at him then, already feeling annoyance crawl up her throat from the lack of Neil's familiar response. He’s standing a few feet away from her and he's not even looking at her. Billie’s pretty sure he wouldn’t mind if she died. It’d be a wish come true for him, probably, but this whole strange exchange allows her the opportunity to look at Neil for the first time in a long while. She looks at his face lined with age, at the greying hair by his temples, at the harsh line of his mouth.

Out of nowhere, the anger and annoyance fade and she's struck by the desperate need to make him look at her. To get his attention and make him react to her in a way that would satiate the gaping nothingness that's been her life before and during the facility. She wants _anything_ from him, not this strange silence they have that reminds her of the first few days after her mom died.

"Something wrong?" He asks, turning to face her but still not looking her in the eye like he does when confronted with the fact that Billie still exists.

Her heart thuds loudly in her chest and she can hear the pounding of her pulse in her ears. She can taste the salt of the ocean and burning of her lungs. She can feel the wave crashing down on her body, the force of it knocking what's left of her oxygen out. She can feel the waves throw her down and up and down again, can feel the thin cloth slip away between her fingers.

“Dad?” she whispers loud enough for Neil to hear feeling like a kid again. Her voice cracks with just the word, odd and unfamiliar to the tongue, a word he hasn’t let her use for 3 years. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here and what she wants. She doesn’t know why Neil picked her up but she knows that she wants to be able to call him Dad and see if he’ll still respond to it - if the instinct to turn when she called him dad hasn’t been torn away just yet. If, for some fucked up reason that she doesn’t even know, she can still call him that.

Billie bites into her lip again, waiting. Wishing that the tide didn't take away both her parents from her.

Neil looks surprised at that, his face betraying him before he could mask it all up with a sneer. For a second there, he looked like he did back when he loved her. It makes Billie want to launch herself at him and beg him to come back. To say _please_ and let him tell her it’ll be alright. To let him throw her up the air the way he’d done when she was a kid, carefree with the knowledge that he’ll catch her every time.

There’s a pregnant pause. A seven foot wave tumbles in her insides, desperate for something to devour.

“Go to your room, Billie,” He says instead, turning away.

She stands there for a second longer feeling bereft. The seven foot wave crashes - takes everything warm in its path and leaves nothing but loneliness in its wake.

She thinks of Malibu, then she thinks of the tide and of how life would have been like if Billie's the one the ocean took away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all your comments and kudos. I really really appreciate them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY FUCK, I _HATE_ THIS CHAPTER. It won't fucking _end_ , holy shit.
> 
> Ahem.
> 
> Right, sorry for the absence. I left the country halfway through rereading this stupid chapter only to come back home and rewrite it 4 more times. Just. I'm posting it because I wanna move the hell on from this monster of a chapter.
> 
> YOU GET A STEVE HARRINGTON HERE. You get him a lot.

Billie Hargrove was familiar with bruises.

Skinned knees, broken arm, and a faint scar on her chin when she fell face first on the edge of the table after playing tag with her friends their neighbour’s house. The kind of bruises that were, she thinks, the signs of having a relatively great childhood learning how to surf and climbing trees and all that shit.

At fifteen, Billie Hargrove became familiar with a different type of bruising. The kind where she had to pretend she fell down the stairs despite the finger shaped bruises on her arms. The kind that forced her to learn how to tape herself back up and, at one point, had to learn how to sew her skin back together.

The first time her dad hit her, she remembers standing frozen by the dinner table with a broken bowl by her feet. Neil, as it was, also stood frozen for a minute before kneeling down beside her, hand reaching out to where her cheek stung.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he had said. For a second, her memory offers her an image of Neil towering above her mother right where she’d fallen on the floor and she knows, right then, that this will happen again.  
At seventeen, Billie Hargrove discovered an even greater source of bruising. The kind where she directly inflicted on herself trying to gain control of her body from this thing residing in it. She remembers hitting her head with her fist, thinking that if her body dies, so would whatever this demon was.

_Weak_ , it had whispered, cackling in her brain. _So weak_.

And when she stood in front of it, her arms outstretched trying to save at least one person from this mess, the pain receded and all that mattered was delaying the creature from killing the kid buying her time to run.

At seventeen, Billie Hargrove felt what it was like to die.

-

“Hargrove,” a voice calls out in a way that lets Billie know they’ve been repeating her name over and over. “Hey Hargrove!”

Billie looks up from where she was sitting by the curb of the road after getting tired from walking after the bus had dropped her off at the stop from her monthly check up the next town over. The monthly check up routine was probably more for the benefit other people, seeing as the doctors from the facility are pretty much running tests that would check if she’s 100% demon free via letting her body boil in what Billie had deemed the tenfold Sauna. After that were another series of tests and only then would they actually tend to the lingering wounds on her body.

They’ve finally removed the stitches on her arms - skin stinging from underneath the long-sleeved shirt and jacket she’s wearing as she sat and stared blankly at the expanse of trees from both sides of the two-lane road. She’s probably ten miles to where she can catch another fucking bus back to the town center of Hawkins where she then would have to wait for another bus to drop her off to the stop half a mile from Neil’s house.

Jesus, she’s fucking exhausted.

“Hey,” the voice calls out _again_ but it sounds gentler this time. “Billie?”

When her eyes finally focus back to the present, Billie finds Steve Harrington slowly crouching in front of her, his car idling right by the side and blocking them from view - not that there’s anyone else in this stretch of road. Billie hasn’t seen another car pass through since she started walking. It’s all just trees and the squelch of her boots as she took a step at a time before ultimately deciding that she needs to rest a bit before she would start walking again.

“What?” She says gruffly, not moving from her spot.

Harrington is crouched just a few inches away from her now, and if Billie had any strength left that wasn’t zapped away by the check up routines, she might have reached out to claw at his pretty face. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Sitting,” she quips, slowly folding her outstretched legs so she could start trying to stand up. Her palms are muddy from where she’s been using them to support her weight. “What’s it look like?”

Harrington is looking at her, his face not giving anything away as he quickly trails his eyes across her body before finally stopping at the side of her face where she knew the persistent fucking blackish vein from the creature won’t fade. Billie hates him for it.

She looks away then, severing the thought off before it could fuel the part of her brain that still wants to inflict pain. She’s not sure if it’s always going to be there - poised to strike the moment Billie gives it a reason to. She’s not even sure if it’s the creature or whatever’s left of it or if there’s anything left of it at all.

Billie wonders if it’s just all her now and the thought makes her squirm. The _things she did_ and the things she knows she could do. She’s pretty sure the creature wouldn’t have been that strong if it wasn’t able to feed on that part of her that wants to hurt people the way she hurt.

“Come on,” Harrington says after clearing his throat. “I’ll give you a ride back.”

She swallows the bile and shakes her head. “I’m good, princess. I can walk.”

“Yeah well,” Harrington starts, stretching his hand out slowly to offer it to her. “You don’t have to.”

Billie wants to fight him for it but shoves the need down to where she wouldn’t have to deal with it. She debates on letting him leave her there. On one hand, she’s exhausted as shit and she doesn’t think she’ll make it to the next stop without vomiting. On the other, she doesn’t actually want to go back to that shithole town yet. Doesn’t want to deal with people who either stare at her or flinch away when they realise she’s nearby.

In the end, she gingerly accepts his hand, letting him help her to her feet then letting him help her when she almost falls back on her ass from the nausea that hits her.

They stand there for a bit, his arms securing her from folding and waiting for Billie’s world to stop tilting on its axis.

“You good?” He asks after a beat, muttering apologies when she hisses after he accidentally presses an arm to where her back was still sore.

It stings, Billie thinks, how patient he’s being when he’s never been patient with her before all the bullshit happened. She doesn’t want his pity. Doesn’t want anyone’s pity and she doesn’t want to be treated delicately. She doesn’t deserve that. Not after what she’s done, and not after they made it off and got her free of any criminal charges like she wasn’t the catalyst to every person that died on and around the fourth of July.

But she lets him guide her to the car sitting just a few feet away. Lets him open the car door because she couldn’t curl her cold fingers enough to hold the latch, much less pull it. Lets him gently slide her down the passenger seat, and when they’re finally right where they had to take a right to Hawkin’s town limits, she lets him miss it. Lets him drive them farther north, merging into US 31.

“Make it quick,” she says from where she’s leaning her head on the window after he misses the next exit as well, voice devoid of any emotion but faint amusement and some relief.

“Huh?”

Billie watches Harrington as his eyes don’t leave the road, absently noting where his hard edges grow soft, the curve of his jaw, and the faint splotches of bruises mottling his temple, barely hidden by his hair.

“If you’re planning to kill me,” she declares calmly, still leaning on the window with her head tilted to where he’s driving. “Make it quick.”

He looks at her then, meets her eyes for a second before quickly looking back to the road. It was still a second long enough for her to see a hint of surprise and mortification in his face. “What are you talking about? I’m not killing you.”

“That’s too bad,” she says, glancing away and curling her knees closer to her chest, the skin of her arms screaming from where they’re stretched around her legs. “I know a good place to bury a body in.”

“You would,” he mutters snidely before visibly chiding himself.

She laughs then, a sharp bark of it but a laugh nonetheless. She stares out the window, the scenery blurring as they speed down the freeway.

“So,” Harrington starts a moment later.

“What,” she snaps.

He’s quiet for a long moment, and it’s blessedly quiet in the car again. Billie hopes it lasts long.

“Were you really gonna walk back to Hawkins from where I found you?”

No such luck then.

“What if I was?”

He eyes her dubiously.

“I’ve done it before,” Billie replies a little defensively, thinking back on the days when she really did take her time going home by walking the same route. “I can do it, Harrington.”

“It’s _Steve_ ,” He insists sounding like he’s said the exact same words before except he hasn’t. “And I know you can do it, Hargrove, I’m asking why you have to.”

“I don’t exactly have a car anymore,” she mutters bitterly, feeling a sharp pang of longing for the Camaro, its husk rotting away in a junkyard somewhere in the middle of Hawkins. “ _Someone_ rammed into it and set it on fire.”

“You were going to run over _Nancy_ ,” Steve supplies devoid of emotion. “You were going to hit Nancy and the kids.”

Billie squeezes her eyes shut, her fingers subconsciously digging into the painful bruise on her chest so she wouldn’t start hyperventilating. She doesn’t know how she remembered that. “Yeah,” she says when her voice felt steady enough. “Yeah, thanks. For not letting me.”

Steve clears his throat and looks away, his fingers tapping the steering wheel with a nervous tick. “Facility?”

She nods before tilting her head back until she’s staring at the ceiling of Harrington’s car, her eyes burning.

“I can drive you,” Steve offers. He’s not looking at her and she’s not looking at him. “Next time. No one should—we shouldn’t be alone.”

Billie chuckles, bringing her fist up to press against her lip. Just thinking about having to go through the routine again _next time_ makes her want to pry open the door and let momentum take its rightful course until she’s nothing but meat crayon on the freeway.

“No big bad’s gonna take me again, Harrington. I’d rather die.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Steve jokes in an effort to lighten the mood and maybe calm her down but he’s also reaching out to pry her fingers from where she’s digging into her shirt before twining their hands together. She tries to pull away but he just tightens his grip.

“I get nightmares all the time” He offers out of nowhere, his fingers still insistently wrapped around hers. “A lot of things happened but it’s always— someone died in my pool about a year ago when everything started. We never found her body but she was taken by _you know_.”

_Oh god_ , she thinks, pressing her mouth to a tight line. _Oh god don't don't don't don't_

“I remember her,” her traitorous lips say, suddenly unable to bite back the one thing she’s been keeping from everyone. She gasps out and lets her head loll to the side so she can look at Steve in the eye and let him see the macabre smile stretching her lips. Her eyes are bright and her teeth are sharp and she’s clutching at his hand so tightly, she’s probably cutting off the blood flow of his hand.

She can see the girl clearly in her mind as if Billie was the one reaching out to wrap herself around her legs before yanking her down the bottom. Billie can taste her fear and remember just how much fun _she_ had when the girl struggled. She licks her lips. “She was tasty.”

Steve curses under his breath, looking around where they’re driving. Probably for a place to stop.

“Yeah, princess,” Billie says through the wide stretch of her lips unable to stop, “I remember a kid with a shaved head. I hated her. I wanted her to die,” Her blood feels like ice in her veins. “I remember a boy. He was scared and it made him sweet, I wanted to break his body and eat it. Almost did, actually. But someone set me on fire."

She pulls her hand from his and smiles at how terrified he looks. "I remember the way it feels to feed on people. To merge them with me until I’m stronger and better. Until I can kill that bitch who tried to stop me.”

“Stop it, Hargrove,” Steve bellows, frantic as he takes the first exit he sees.

She laughs before reaching for the knob to crank the heat up. “I bet you taste sweeter, pretty boy”

A thought crosses her mind like an epiphany, a cold dark night in the middle of nowhere.

“You hit me with a bat,” she continues with wonder and amusement in her voice. She doesn’t sound like herself again. “No, not me. My children. You were _so_ brave.”

“Shut the hell up, Billie,” Steve hisses. "Shut the fuck up, you're not the mindflayer. You didn't eat people."

“Mindflayer,” she repeats, tasting the name on her tongue and remembering the way it forced itself down her throat, choking her as it spreads ice into her veins until the tips of her fingers are blue. She remembers clawing at the ground, calling out for help and burning under the sun. “Is that what I was?”

“It wasn’t you,” Steve insists.

“Sure, Harrington,” Billie supplies weak and weary around the smile on her lips. She closes her eyes and tilts her face up again.

There's a pregnant pause before the car suddenly careens to the right, Billie's eyes snapping open and seeing Steve twist the steering wheel to the side so vehemently, all Billie could do was groan as she hits her head on the window. The tires screech as they roll to a stop by the side of a dirt road, the only car behind them honking angrily and loudly as it speeds past where the smoke from Harrington’s tires is still billowing.

“Fuck, Harrington, _what the hell_ —”

“Shut the fuck up! Stop acting like you’re some murderer, Hargrove, what the _fuck_. You are not the mindflayer.”

The back of Billie’s head throbs from where it hit the window and her body is aching in a way that reminds her of the crumpled prescription in her jacket pocket and the empty canister in the other. _Fuck_.

“And you say I’m dramatic. _Jesus_.” Billie spits out, reaching forward to shove him but he grabs her wrist tightly and yanks her closer.

Billie stills the way she does when Neil does the exact same thing, her words dying in her throat as her lips automatically snap shut.

Steve takes one look at her face and deflates, his fingers letting her go only to reach up pull at his hair. “Sorry,” he mutters before bowing his head to hide the way his lips trembled. He reaches down to switch the engine off. “Fuck. I’m not doing this right.”

“Doing what right, Harrington? You sure weren't planning to kill me?”

“ _Yes_ , I’m sure,” Steve hisses, both of his hands pulling at his hair now. “I just wanted to—I was driving. I drive sometimes just to _drive_. I saw you there and I thought you were, _I don’t know_. A fucking demogorgon or something. I was going to get my bat but when I drove closer, it was you. I wasn’t _planning_ to pick you up.”

“You _exhaust_ me, Harrington. Do you want me to,” she gestures outside. “just leave or something? I can hitch a ride or whatever.”

“What? _No_!” Steve snaps, the road goes on for miles forward and behind them. “Are you insane? No! Jesus, let me think.”

Billie, winded as she was and unable to think of anything else to do, settles and leans her back on the seat waiting for him to fucking finish his thought process or something.

“Hargrove, I’m going to say this again,” he starts, sliding closer and forcing her to meet his eyes. He looks terrified and brave, determined like he had been the night he stood in the middle of a junkyard with only a baseball bat in hand. It isn’t her memory. “You’re not the mindflayer. It used you. _You_ didn’t kill all those people. Whatever’s in your brain right now, it wasn’t you. And I’m definitely not planning to kill you.”

“Okay,” she says for the benefit of not going around in circles, watching as Steve takes a shaky breath. “Okay. Geez, okay. Anyone ever tell you how big of a hero complex you have, pretty boy?”

He scoffs, looking away. Steve still seems to be teetering towards hyperventilating so Billie reaches out absently, her fingers wrapping around his wrist tightly the way he did moments before. She can feel his pulse beating under her fingers and wonders how easy she could crush it the bones jutting out of his skin.

“You wanna smoke?” She asks casually, trying to find a way to deflate the situation and put a stopper on where her thoughts were going.

He looks at her in disbelief, mouth curling up before breathing out a hysterical laugh. “Yeah,” he says, twisting his hand from her grip. She lets it go. “Yeah, that’s a great idea.”

Billie digs through her jean pocket, trying to hide the wince when it jostles her ribs further but not saying anything until she manages to pluck out the semi-crushed pack of Marlboro Reds.

She quickly snatches the back of his shirt when he makes to open his door and step out of the car.

Steve stops and raises an eyebrow in question.

“Let’s just crank the windows open, huh?”

He wrinkles his nose in disgust and shakes his head. “It’s gonna stink here.”

“We’ll air it out,” Billie insists and smiles sheepishly at him before admitting “Besides, you make me stand from where I’m sitting, you’re gonna have to carry me back.”

His eyes widen, gaze traveling up and down her body checking for any visible bruises. “Are you—”

“I’m fine, princess” She says, pulling the zippo from where it’s resting on the dashboard. Amused at how quickly he switches moods. “Just a little achy.”

“Billie—”

“You’ve been saying my name a lot, pretty boy,” she says, cutting him off and lighting the stick she placed between her lips before offering the pack to him. “It’s fine, Harrington. We just need to get my pain meds somewhere. I didn’t know you were gonna kidnap me.”

He looks at her again seemingly to confirm that she’s not bleeding anywhere before taking a stick and leaning forward to let her light his up when she wouldn’t hand the zippo to him.

When they finish chain-smoking four sticks each, Billie looks up to find Steve looking at her, a curious expression on his face. She blinks at him, the sunset painting the world around them with swathes of pink and orange.

“What?” She asks gruffly, her gut sinking at the way he's looking at her.

The fading sunlight bathes his face in shadow, his eyes bright and warm. He looks lit by the golden sky behind him and Billie thinks of what it might have been like if they met each other in Malibu.

“Nothing,” he says, straightening his spine before twisting his body until he's facing forward again, hand reaching under to turn the engine back on. “Let’s go home, Hargrove.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for hanging on! Leave some comments for dumbass typos. I'm so sorry hahahaha *propels self to the sun*


End file.
